With summer at its height, caring for your garden can often be extremely difficult.

Combinations of heat, insects, and disease can turn a healthy garden brown extremely quickly.

Duayne Friesen, the host of the Lawn and Garden Journal, shares his tips for looking after your garden.

"Number one would be watching your watering. It is a dry year, in most places we're looking at 70 percent of our usual rain. First rules of watering is water thoroughly and then let it get the dryer side moist before you re-water."

Friesen says it's important to water deep so the roots of the plants are encouraged to grow down.

Insects and other pests can also be damaging to your plants. He says proper information and monitoring will be your best tools for dealing with pests.

Insects such as aphids, caterpillars, and beetles have become harder to deal with as the kinds of sprays or chemicals you can use become more limited.

Eggs from most insects can be found under the leaves of your plants, so removing the leaves or wiping the eggs off can help reduce future adult populations.

Potato beetles can be tenacious, Friesen says, though removing the adults and eggs are a start. Tilling your soil as the first frost comes in will uncover any burrowing beetles, freezing them, giving you the advantage against insects coming in during the spring.

Rabbits are also difficult to deter. He notes the best way to deal with rabbits is simply to put up a fence, keeping them from your plants.

"Go out there and monitor," says Friesen. "You'll hear about it in farm reports. Farmers are going out and scouting their fields constantly. Go out there everyday and catch things early."

For those wanting to start gardening, Friesen suggests starting with fruits and vegetables.

Many fruits or vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, are easy to care for and watching the flowers and food plant grow is very rewarding.

Controlling weeds early is also key. Learn whether plants are annual; germinate, flower, release seeds, and die in one season, or perennial; herbaceous plants that reproduce through seed, flower, or grow from the root, and come back each year.

Pull annual weeds before they can go to seed, and pull out annual weeds roots.

If started in spring and kept under control, weeds won't be a large factor near the end of the summer.

When a garden has weeds Friesen says to continue to remove them, but do not be alarmed; weeds are a sign that a garden is fertile.